Do You Have Time To Learn Everything?
Jul 6th, 2008 by AZuidhof
These days is harder to keep up than ever. See for example this list of subjects I have (more or less successfully) tried to get my head around in the last year(s). Your list may vary, but probably -hopefully- has some shared topics. What is your trick to keep ahead of things?
- all things xDD: T/B/DDD
- DSL
- Unittesting
- Mocking frameworks
- OR/M
- Continuous Integration
- C# 3.0, .NET 3.5
- LINQ everywhere
- ASP.NET MVC
- EnterpriseLibrary
- Tools-tools-tools (every trick having it’s own tool)
- OK, to mention one of them: the indispensable ReSharper - actually a no-brainer as it saves you time -
- Team Foundation Server / VSTS
- Agile
- Alt.Net
- Dependency Injection
- Refactoring to patterns
- Patterns in general, for that matter
- ….?
So much to know, so little time: how do you keep up? Or do you specialize in winnowing out the chaff? What are the must-have tools/methodologies/stuff from the list?
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My trick is to make a list of things I’m NOT going to learn:
http://www.pseale.com/blog/LearningLahar.aspx
But yeah, we’re all overwhelmed.
@Peter: excellent solution! The hard thing for curious people like me however is to stick to the plan (note to self: must…not…go…find…out…what…astoria…is…)
You
And Chris Alcock, and Steve Pietrek, and various techie podcasts. They manage to sprinkle enough ideas around every day that I’m usually vaguely aware of most new MS tech. I take mental notes, or tell the guys in the office, when a new technology springs up that might be useful for any of the projects we’re on. Normally we don’t get a chance to *ply* with said technology, but at least it’s there in the back of the mind.
@Dan F: you’re thinking too much of me… I am just being so stupid that I try to, but new technologies up faster than one is able to cope with, even me
I don’t think you can. One trick that’s been useful for me to stay sane is to pick and choose and to slowly incorporate the “new technologies” into my daily routines. For example, there came a time when I found myself always writing little 20-something line C# apps to accomplish some side related task, like parsing XML files, generating random data, etc. Before long I ended up picking up one of the new and upcoming technologies to help me do these types of things. This new technology was PowerShell. It was a perfect way to still stay productive but also learn something new.
Anyway, great question as it’s something we as developers always struggle with! Maybe it’s how creative we become with our answers that really matter.